Zoo (the movie), serial killers and ass-pennys

I’m wondering what it takes to overcome very strong taboos, and what is the experience once you’ve crossed them. I’m not going to get into how taboos are formed, and whether they are natural or social or whatever. The fact remains that we have taboos and people find a way past them. Zoophilia for modest example. Murder is taboo, rape seems even worse, I guess it is because murder isn’t necessarily painful, but rape victims presumably never forget (or get over) the pain. Pedophilia probably tops the list, and the reasons for that are obvious. Zoophilia, at least in the case portrayed in the movie Zoo (Dir: Robinson Devor), being on the receiving end of the act, is a little different. Rush Limbaugh is heard in the movie arguing, “how could a horse not consent?” How do you rape yourself with a horse? That came out wrong. Rather, how do you rape a horse into administering…you get the point. Enough of that. It doesn’t seem very clear.

These people who were involved in this situation in the movie, presumably they didn’t just stumble upon this one day and thought “oh what the hell” or something, except that one of the guys in the movie puts it that “for some reason it just happened one day”, but there is no way that that can be taken seriously. So, from whatever cause (and there must be a cause: trauma, bad genes, etc), these people had a desire for animals, and as one guy says “the horse is the biggest thing on the internet”. (I guess he is referring to the zoo circles that he frequents.) Finding that you have desires such as these, one can’t but know very well that this is seriously taboo. Presumably this taboo has some affect on the individuals, but obviously some people aren’t deterred by taboos. I’m assuming then that it is either a kind of compulsion (or a REALLY strong desire, and whether there is any difference I don’t claim to know) or that they just don’t give a shit somehow (sociopathic or something). Anyways, here is my thesis: there is degree of “taking the plunge” when you get into something like zoophilia; there is no going back.

A taboo as strong as the one that keeps us from having sexual intercourse with animals would have to require some considerable force or something to be overcome. Assuming that these people wrestled with this desire of theirs (as is talked about in the movie too), I’m thinking that there must be a discontinuous point where one just “takes the plunge”. Like I said, I don’t think this is something you just find your self doing one day; one doesn’t just fall into it. At this moment of taking the plunge, one would be transformed. And when I say “transformed” I mean in the sense of taking on a new role/avatar (as the guys in the movie all had). But not just taking on a name, but starting from year 1 and living an enchanted life from then on. By “enchanted”, I mean that your life would have a purpose and orientation, as in being reborn. There is a scene in the movie seen from the front seat of a cop car, and the gang of zoophiles walks across the street in front of this cop car, and one guy with a gesture halts this cop car without hesitation as they cross in front of it. This is a gang of like 8 people, and I’m thinking that part of the reason why he had the power to halt this cop car is that they have been having sex with horses. This is where the ass-pennies comes in.

These guys had a secret. And for some weird reason, secrets can be powerful. Even if the secret is that you have the nerve to withstand a horse. You would walk around knowing this fact (like knowing that everyone has handled your ass-pennies) and it would give you an edge.

Everyone has had this experience of cognitive dissonance where you feel a very deep emotional conflict, “what have I done!!!???” that must be repelled because it is so disturbing. With Zoo-people, I’m guessing it is magnitudes stronger. Once you have “taken the plunge” and this dissonance sets in, I’m thinking there aren’t too many ways of coping with this (unless you are a sociopath): one would be to cave in and try to find salvation in order to cope with what you have experienced, another would be to kind of throw caution to the wind and embrace (or try to out-run) this dissonance. The latter would be easier to do if you had a support group like these guys did.But at the same time it is a bubble, and this is why I said it may be something like “out-running” the eventual collapse of this bubble. This is what made me think of serial-killers. Serial-killers know that their time is limited and short work must be made of it. Like Bonny and Clyde, it would have to exhilirating, enchanting, etc. while it lasted. I’m not saying that it would be great fun to be on a killing spree, but that I’m guessing that for a serial killer the most enchanted and engaged time of their life. But once the CNN helicopter is hovering over your house and there is a cavalcade of cop cars coming down the road, you don’t feel so cool. That is when the enchantment ends. That is when the real dissonance begins (unless you are a sociopath).